After waking up early on Christmas morning and starting to cook at 6 a.m., making a complete Christmas dinner with everything I wanted to eat and sitting down at 3:30 p.m. to eat with most of the dishes washed and put away, I figure I’ve got a handle on this cooking thing.

{Make this Baja sauce ahead of time and refrigerate. It lasts for a few weeks and is ready to use when you’re ready to use it. The sauce tastes great on burritos and as a dipping sauce on vegetables.}

It was also nice to have dinner scheduled for the next few days with leftovers. My reprieve didn’t actually last that long because someone (no names mentioned, again) was looking for something new and different to eat on December 26. I made him eat leftovers for one more day and then I knew that was as far as I was going to be able to stretch the experience. I, on other hand, ate Christmas dinner through Friday before I finally had enough.Read more…

I make chili, but it doesn’t have meat in it. Usually, meatless doesn’t matter in our home and everyone eats whatever I serve because, well, it’s good. This chili is good even if I do say so myself, and I do.

Before I canceled all chili making, I took a survey to find out why the chili wasn’t a favorite especially since it’s so easy to make. I like to cook, but if I can save time in the kitchen, then I’m all for that. What I learned is that they like the chili, but the sweet potato chunks were too big. Funny, because that is what makes the chili so special; the big sweet potato chunks.Read more…

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had lost my desire to cook; I mean real cooking. Well, gladly it returned, but as I started putting my menus together of things I wanted to make, I noticed that a certain and same ingredient was missing, which prevented me from making many of those meals. It was vegetable broth. So far, I have only found two soup recipes that we like that don’t require broth. One is white bean soup (my quick-go-to soup) and the other is minestrone and pesto soup, which taste great with cheese biscuits.

I eat soup year-around, but I feel fall coming and I want more soup. I finally took the time and made two batches of broth. Most of it is already gone after being used in a few soups that I made. The rest has been placed in the freezer ready for me to defrost whenever I need it for the next time I’m ready to make more soup.Read more…